When Everyone Is Right… and It’s Still Not Working
I stepped in to run a distribution business that wasn’t performing.
Not because of bad people. Not because of bad tools.
Because things just weren’t lining up.
In my first 30 days, I kept hearing:
Sales: “We don’t have enough trucks, people, or inventory.”
Operations: “Sales is overpromising.”
Purchasing: “Inventory is being mismanaged.”
Credit: “Some of our biggest customers aren’t paying on time.”
Leadership: “We have too much of everything.”
Customers: “You don’t deliver when you say you will.”
Everyone had a point. And that was the issue.
What Was Really Going On
This wasn’t a people problem or a capacity problem.
It was a disconnect.
Everyone was doing their job the way they thought made sense, but no one was working off the same definition of what “good” actually looked like.
So instead of arguing about who was right, we stepped back and looked at the whole process flow:
What we promise to what we have to how we deliver to when we get paid.
That’s where we started to figure things out.
What We Actually Did
We didn’t overcomplicate it. We just improved communication and got aligned.
1. Got clear on the promise
What can we actually deliver, and when? Not best case. Reality.
2. Stopped treating every customer the same
Some customers matter more to the business. Service levels and terms should reflect that.
3. Put some guardrails in place
No more guessing or “we’ll figure it out.” If we can’t see it, we don’t promise it.
4. Measured the same things across the board
On-time delivery, fill rate, backorders, inventory, past due. One scoreboard, not five.
5. Talked weekly about what actually broke
Not blame, just where things missed and why.
What Made the Biggest Difference
The biggest shift wasn’t internal. It was how we worked with our customers.
We spent time really understanding where they were feeling the pain. Then we were honest about ours:
Where things were breaking down
What we could actually commit to
What needed to change on both sides
That really changed everything.
Conversations got simpler.
Expectations got more realistic.
And we started operating closely together, instead of pushing problems back and forth.
Performance improved, for them and for us.
Bottom Line
We didn’t fix this by adding more trucks, people, or inventory.
We fixed it by getting aligned:
On what we promise
On what we can actually deliver
And on how our customers operate
The Key Question
Before you throw more resources at a problem, ask:
Do we all agree on what “good” looks like, and are we aligned with our customers on it too?
If not, adding more resources just makes the problem more expensive.
